Back to the Land with Kate Humble
BBC TWO, 7.00PM
There aren’t many TV shows that merit the word “inspirational” but Kate Humble’s series looking at the lives and work of entrepreneurial countryside pioneers around the UK does. Here she returns for another 12-part run, beginning by visiting four new start-ups in Cornwall which were prompted by a perceived gap in the market. Her clear favourites – she returns again and again to check on their progress – are free-diving seaweed harvesters Caro and Tim. This sustainability-aware pair were looking to work locally when they realised that, despite seaweed becoming more fashionable as a cooking ingredient, no one was harvesting the plentiful supply in the sea near them. Much hard work and ingenuity later, it’s an unlikely business idea that looks set to be a winner.
Humble also meets a couple who reversed their farm’s declining fortunes by taking a leap of faith into free-range duck breeding, two best friends who supply native-flower bouquets to Cornwall’s booming high-end wedding market and a lavishly bearded brewer whose wild foraging in the local fields and hedgerows supplies the ingredients for his uniquely flavoured “wild” beers. Gerard O’donovan